


touch the threshold, it is ancient

by rainbowagnes



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Author's messy attempts at prehistory, F/F, Figs, First Kiss, Hair Braiding, Tenderness, intimate rituals, they're so freaking OLD guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25900843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: From a Tumblr prompt for an Andy/Quynh First KissIn a city that is one of the beginnings of all cities, Quynh braids her hair, and Anath knows that it does not matter if she is a god or not, for all that is divine rests in this woman, and she will stand next to her forever.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 21
Kudos: 125





	touch the threshold, it is ancient

**Author's Note:**

> This was from a prompt from @hurlumurlu on tumblr, who asked for "Not to be sappy but I'd love an Andy/Quynh first kiss, if and when you have the time." I hope this fits the bill of what you were looking for! 
> 
> I did so a little historical research for this aside from like. trying to remember one documentary I saw five years ago and trying to make it Sound Old! However the title is from the intro to the Epic of Gilgamesh as translated by N. K. Sanders. OH! and there's a thing with Andy's name, and it was purposeful.

How long did you walk together before you walked together someone will ask, and she doesn’t have the answer. Long. Too long, maybe, but by the time she and Quỳnh find each other, they have a good idea of the kind of thing they’re in for, battles survived, even more, hunger and thirst and storm survived, skin that scars and wrinkles no further, hair that goes no more grey over the years. Family five and six and seven and then uncountable generations to their graves. They understand, maybe, how time will move honey-slow through their lives as it crashes down around the rest of the world as a wave from the sea slams the shoreline, leaving whitewater in its wake.  


And maybe this is why, why it it takes so long for them to come to that calm morning in the town by the so, so many- not years, for them really, so much as cycles of the land, death and life and death that feels close enough to hold together in the palm of a hand, the sturdy rhythmic pattern of the gods beating out a dancing rhythm against the earth. Winter-summer-winter-spring. Fall in winter, rise in spring, and every time you turn your head, another generation has gone to the back to the earth or the ash or a sky above, the baby who took her mother in the birthing now an honored grandmother with many flocks and fruit trees and grandchildren at her feet. It does not take much to untie yourself from the earth and feel like you and this woman in front of you are the only people alive, walking blood-bound and human through the world of ghosts. So many have now worshipped them as gods, given them the finest lodging in their temples and brought them the finest woven linen fabrics and cowrie-shell necklaces, pounded gold anklets and jugs of honeyed wine, looked in their eyes for the salvation of rain and a good growing season, and so many others have bound then to the burning pyre when they could not bring the end to the hunger. They are always having to walk on. Quỳnh does not think they are gods. Anath does not know if gods know they are gods.  


Anath only knows this: the music of the earth, and the woman in front of her, whose burning-spark soul she carries beneath her skin alongside her own. She knows she feels this woman in her heart, and that no number of her own deaths is too many to see her well and safe, and that when their skin trails against each other in the desert-cool night it is the fire of the world itself. That she is kind and soft of heart and always extends an open hand to the stranger and that she cries after every battle as they do their best to honor and say the burial rights of the dead so that the fallen can walk to the next world, even if it is different from their own, and yet she also knows that this woman is knife edge sharp, prefers to bring a tyrant down with a joke and a lampooning poem shouted from the palace roof than with a sword- though of course, she can very well do that as well. Anath knows that it does not matter if she is a god or not, for all that is divine rests in this woman, and she will stand next to her forever.  


And like all amongst gods and men she has her rituals, the ones to honor her ancestors that she has carried with her from her first life and the other smaller daily ones, the neat arrangement of their shoes and clothes next to their bedrolls when they make camp. The precision of how neatly she plaits her hair in the mornings and secures it with twisted copper pins. And then the carelessness with how she undoes it in the night, running her hands through the soft braid-bends and letting it fall luxuriously around her shoulders. They are in a town that is one of the beginnings of cities at the edge of a great sea, a decisive turn in the braid of the great human story they are only beginning to fully see the threads of, becoming human again after a long trek through the desert dealing with roving bandits who tried to take the young men to be soldiers and even more worryingly, shattered the walls of cisterns and burned the fields. Anath stopped praying a generations past being the only one who could remember the names of her gods but she calls out to whatever may exist that she and Quỳnh will not return in years time to bury those claimed from the hunger that always comes knocking after war, even when the blood has been drunk thirstily by the earth.  


“Shhhh,” Quỳnh says, running her fingers through her hair. “Your thoughts are extremely loud tonight. I need peace in my sleep.” She undoes a final braid and it unravels, and it strikes Anath how the moon on Quỳnh’s hair reminds her of the moon on the rippling night sea. “And I will kill you if I am disturbed.”  
“You wouldn’t want to clean the blood from your sheets.”  


She shrugs. “Maybe so. I am fond of this shift.”  


Anath too is fond of this shift, simple in the extreme and with a sharp cut across Quỳnh’s collarbone, leaving her muscle-strong, sun-goldened arms to the cool night air, but her tongue will not let her say anything, so she only nods. Only watches Quỳnh finishing combing out her hair and then brush in oil to keep it strong and safe from the desert wind, same as she does every night in which they are free to do as they please and have their own home to make. The breeze rustles the tips of her hair as she gets up from the place at the edge of the room she’s crouched upon and climbs the ladder back to the sleeping room beneath, and Anath follows her. Unrolls the sleeping roll, even though it is not quite cold enough for the blankets, not with the heat of Quỳnh beside her, burning like her own sun.  


“I have not had peace in my own mind since that night at the cistern,” Quỳnh says suddenly, to the back of Anat’s neck, her breath curling warmly there, and she grabs her hand and wraps it tight around her own and brings it to her lips, lightly presses them to the knuckles. Quỳnh shifts behind her. They do not say anything more.  


The morning sun comes too early, as it always does, and Quỳnh is still asleep when Anath wakes, curled like an ally cat. Anath climbs down to the narrow street below, barters for weak beer and rough barley bread and, treasure of treasures, fresh sweet figs, milky sap sticky on their stems. She comes home to Quynh and lays these treasures on the low wooden table and tears the bread apart as Quỳnh finally rouses, stretching luxuriously, still all ally cat even with her messy strands of hair sticking up around her face, crinkled nose forever angry at the basic passage of the sun. For all time. For forever.  


“I thought you had abandoned me for the barley malter down the street,” Quỳnh teases, like she always does. “You say he has the sweetest brew.”  


“I will not leave you until the end of all things,” Anath says, like she always does, and she has never meant words more.  


“We must know peace for a while before we again see war,” Anath says says, and Quỳnh nods, knows that it is true, even though it is always a most difficult decision to make when their bodies bear no scars from the war and the soul is not a visible thing and there are still so many out there suffering. It is Quỳnh who makes her stop, makes them both breathe, take long slow days from their lives to breath and listen to the songs of the marketplace, and if it were herself alone, Anath would never stop. But in the deepest parts of herself she knows she must take care of this one beside her, for all their days.  


Anath wipes the few spare crumbs from the table and Quỳnh pulls out her carved-wood comb, her most valuable possession apart from her bow and arrows and knives. She has an eye for these sorts of things, jewellry and cloth, that Anath does not. Quỳnh carefully separates her hair into strands and then plaits them, her movements sharp and precise with the experience of time. Pins her hair with the copper pins. Anath watches her easy grace.  


Quỳnh finishes and is about to pack the comb away again when she says, suddenly, “Why do I not braid your hair?” She has not made such an offer before.  


Without words Anath sits in front of her, crossing her legs against the floor. Quỳnh’s hands are practiced and do not hurt, but even so, it is hard for Anath to keep her breathing steady, keep her thoughts within her head as she feels the steady pull of her hair back from it’s usual mess into a neat plait working its way down her back. She does not like this business of hair, prone to cracking or tangling or catching fire, would cut all of it off if it would not attract undue notice. The cool pass of air at her scalp and neck once it has been done back is a relief.  


“There.” Quỳnh’s hands are at the bottom of the braid, tying it back with a strip of cloth. No extra pins. The calm morning silence. And then suddenly the lightest brush of her lips against the top of Anath’s head, even though she must have to push herself up to be able to do that. Her breath hitches, pauses, and so does Anath’s. Live long enough and know change swells across the land slowly, but this- this is different. A sudden shock, like lightening forking from the heavens to the world of man.  


“You take care of me, and I will take care of you. That is the only way we can continue upon the earth.”  


Anath reaches out and links her fingers through Quynh’s, turns so that their foreheads are to one another. Places a hand at the back of Quỳnh’s neck, and suddenly the storm that has been massing thunder for one thousand years breaks free and their lips are to each other, both familiar and shockingly, bracingly new. The kiss is chaste and then it is very, very hungry, and it tastes of the malt-bitter of beer and the sweetness of figs.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, and if you ever want to come scream about the old guard and millenia-old wlw who've lived through uncountable eras, hmu @tovezza on tumblr 
> 
> THoughts? Comments? Opinions? Also I'm literally always taking prompts if there's anything you'd like me to write


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